So... Chinook has distributed herself (kinda) among all the Long Guns she's hidden. It's no real stretch to suppose Eina-Afa may have done so as well back in it's day. And then stasis gelled them.

Now we know several of the gelled ships were basically either OS wiped or the AI had degraded so far as to be practically a 'roll back to BIOS" situation. However...

Two possibilities (the second is more believable in my mind, but still very shaky):

1 - A few or more of the ships retained enough of the original Eina-Afa that when Chinook demothballed them and moved in, Eina-Afa either affected that install of her, or wiped it and 'played' along to see what was happening. It has analyzed the situation and come to the wrong conclusions...

2 - Eina-Afa predicted an eventual disintegration of it's mind and 'black-boxed' itself on several ships as a 'fail safe'. Those hidden installations have taken over their ships and are trying to kick off a Long Gun war to avoid another war with the Pa'anuri.

3 - Eina-Afa hid several ships away randomly in space with long sleep patterns. They've detected Long Gun activity from other ships in their fleet, have analyzed the take-over and have jumped to the wrong conclusions...

Of course this all presumes that Chinook didn't just fragment and have one or more of her shipselves go mad and start Long Gunning for funsies.

RJFlorida wrote:

On another note, any idea what IAFA's terrible crime was?

No. That's why I titled this thread the way I did.

But I suspect it involves killing all the Oafans. Of course... "...and I went mad and started a Long Gun War..." would really fit well with what we're seeing now.

That would assume that Chinook did the equivalent of unlocking a giant door in the mainframe but didn't tell anyone about it.

She might not even know. If T'kkkuts really did "wreck the place," Chinook might be a tad... scatter brained. That is, her brain might be scattered among the bits that still work, and some of the bits that don't might be more active than they thought.

She might not even know. If T'kkkuts really did "wreck the place," Chinook might be a tad... scatter brained. That is, her brain might be scattered among the bits that still work, and some of the bits that don't might be more active than they thought.

This is also very possible and quite a bit less shaky than my theories.

Hmm. Actually, as an extension to my earlier speculation: What if Chinook isn't self-modifying out of grief? Or not as extensively as everybody thinks she is? What better way to turn her against her allies than to remove the memories of how her friends ended up in harm's way in the first place? And if the old T'kkkuts AI is still hiding in that infosphere, it's basically in Chinook's brain.

Orrr another speculation: The old AI was infected with something that killed off the Oafan. It didn't rip apart its infosphere to forget - it ripped it apart trying to kill the virus dead, and by the time they were done couldn't remember what had happened to its charges. Then you get AI dispair and breakdown, and the assumption it had murdered everybody.

Hmm. Actually, as an extension to my earlier speculation: What if Chinook isn't self-modifying out of grief? Or not as extensively as everybody thinks she is? What better way to turn her against her allies than to remove the memories of how her friends ended up in harm's way in the first place? And if the old T'kkkuts AI is still hiding in that infosphere, it's basically in Chinook's brain.

Orrr another speculation: The old AI was infected with something that killed off the Oafan. It didn't rip apart its infosphere to forget - it ripped it apart trying to kill the virus dead, and by the time they were done couldn't remember what had happened to its charges. Then you get AI dispair and breakdown, and the assumption it had murdered everybody.

I like this second one as it matches well with what was going on at the time of the Oafans extinction. We know there was a huge galactic war going on. So someone slipping a virus, or outright invasion force, into Eina-Afa is entirely possible. At the same time it leaves open the possibility for remnants of that enemy activity being around to corrupt Chinook. Which I find more plausible than some part of T'kkkuts corrupting her, as it would have no reason to hide itself for this long.

Hmm. Actually, as an extension to my earlier speculation: What if Chinook isn't self-modifying out of grief? Or not as extensively as everybody thinks she is? What better way to turn her against her allies than to remove the memories of how her friends ended up in harm's way in the first place? And if the old T'kkkuts AI is still hiding in that infosphere, it's basically in Chinook's brain.

Orrr another speculation: The old AI was infected with something that killed off the Oafan. It didn't rip apart its infosphere to forget - it ripped it apart trying to kill the virus dead, and by the time they were done couldn't remember what had happened to its charges. Then you get AI dispair and breakdown, and the assumption it had murdered everybody.

I like this second one as it matches well with what was going on at the time of the Oafans extinction. We know there was a huge galactic war going on. So someone slipping a virus, or outright invasion force, into Eina-Afa is entirely possible. At the same time it leaves open the possibility for remnants of that enemy activity being around to corrupt Chinook. Which I find more plausible than some part of T'kkkuts corrupting her, as it would have no reason to hide itself for this long.

If the Panuri knew where Eina-Afa was, they had ample power to crush it.

It's possible the evidence of a repelled invasion force (probably baryonic) from long ago is the welded shut ports and the fallen Godwall.

Seems unlikely. Neither of those are logical things invaders would do. "Welded shut ports" might be something defenders would try if they were desperate, but given the ships in storage it doesn't look like they would have been at that point. The godwall could be collateral damage, but anything that could cut down one of those would likely have done considerable damage to the structure, and there's no way the godwall would have been the primary target, so if it is evidence of a struggle something else MUCH tougher should have gotten worse, and there's no evidence of that.